A Broken Mirror
by Foulds
Summary: Lash; war criminal, genius, psychopath, child, and prisoner of Orange Star after the last war. Months later, Sonja comes to visit her fallen adversary...


_Some spoilers for the end of DS. I don't own Advance Wars._

_Jon_

Lash had always built weapons. But the third war was different. In the third war, there had been different kinds of weapons. Worse weapons; living things that had done nothing but eat, and crystals that had almost killed the world. But they were gone now. Destroyed. The third war had also been different because it had left the Orange Star military with Lash as a prisoner.

There had been three weeks when some had hoped that it might work. Some began to vainly hope that all those loose ends at the end of the war might tie themselves up. But then there was Lash - the little mad girl, as Nell called her. Jake was willing to suggest she had reformed during the third war. Most of the COs simply stayed silent.

For three weeks, it had worked. In the days she skipped, and laughed, and awkwardly dressed how she was told to dress, and learnt how to use cutlery, and became tolerable, if hardly liked.

Then somebody died; an experiment that had gone wrong. Lash refused to accept it had gone wrong. In fact she insisted it had gone right. She pointed at the corpse in defence of this view. That was the day Lash disappeared into a military prison.

That Lash was a war criminal was evident to anybody with any knowledge of her acts in the last two wars. Her inventions demonstrated her genius. A series of thorough psychological examinations chorused the term 'psychopath'. And anybody who had the proper clearance and inclination to visit her secure accommodation might - if they hadn't steeled themselves, and didn't know better - consider that she was just a lonely 16-year-old girl with no idea of her parentage, or surname, and seemingly no desire to discover either.

Sami knew there was something inside the girl that never slept. Sami knew because Sami watched her at night. She never closed her eyes. When she lay down, and her hands and lip twitched, she always stared into a distance she couldn't see, with a smile on her face, and a tear falling down her cheek onto the pillow.

Sami sometimes asked her what she dreamt of, when she smiled so sweetly.

'The end,' Lash always replied, 'The end of everything. Absolute final uniform forever. And it's beautiful.'

It was during the second month that she stopped talking to anybody except Sami. She became more and more distant. The east-facing wall - though exactly the same as the other walls - began to hold some great wonder for her.

In the third month, Sami - speaking on behalf of doctors whose existence Lash was no longer willing or able to recognise - asked Lash whether she remembered building the Black Crystals.

'Did I?' Lash replied. 'Maybe I did. Not sure. Anyway,' she continued with a shake of her head, 'I have more important things to think about.'

And so she stayed in solitary confinement for seven months.

* * *

Lash was aware of a loitering presence outside the room; no footsteps, but the faint sounds of material shifting. It took Sonja 196 seconds to enter the cell, which was 27 seconds less than Lash had made an estimate of. Sonja stood by the door, signalled to a guard Lash could not see to leave, hesitated, steadfastly refused to look at Lash, sat down, and only then met her gaze. Sonja swallowed, and struggled to begin, breathing in, but then breathing out again with a muted disappointed grunt. Lash's hair was long and unkempt, and Sonja had not mentally prepared herself to see Lash in such a state. 

Lash tutted, 'You are not really here' she stated matter-of-factly, while rolling a torn off piece of nail up and down her palm with her thumb.

'What makes you say that?' Sonja replied, following Lash's lead in the conversation in the absence of any better starting point.

'Because Sonja would never come here, for the exact same reason that a mischievous corner of my subconscious has decided to conduct an internal dialogue with you as one of the pair of orators,' Lash said all in one breath, then grinned at the surprised look on Sonja's face. Sonja leaned back in the chair and mused over Lash's words. 'Because she's scared of me,' added Lash with a spot of impatience.

'I am not scared of you,' Sonja responded levelly.

'Correct, Sonja,' Lash replied without a moment's pause, 'I am tied to a chair, and heavily medicated, and you are almost certainly carrying a sidearm because you are both cautious and insecure. You do not fear me for what I could do, but for what I've done, because you're the only one sharp enough to see inside me, and see the genius. Because I am a genius. And you're… not a genius, but you're not far off. And you know that the only difference between me and you is that you are in control of one of the most effective military machines in the world, and I have no access to deodorant in case I determine a way to kill myself with it. You've seen how similar we are inside, and that scares you.'

'You don't know what I've seen,' Sonja whispered. To the north, there was nothing but desert, stretching on forever. Dead dry sand, and thousands of rotting corpses. Birds and fish and animals and people all just shattered bones and torn flesh. Most of the wasteland would never recover from the war.

Lash considered this for a moment, 'That's true.' The black crystals had been a bad idea, in Lash's opinion, just like Kindle's pet projects. There had been too many variables; it had been too uncontrolled. Anything could have happened, and even Lash didn't know exactly what _had_ happened. But she did know that Sonja would have gone to see it. 'It is possible you are Sonja.' She smiled widely, pulling against her restraints to lean forwards as far as she could, 'But if you're not in my head, that means you've travelled half way across the world, and leant on Orange Star until they've let you see the one person in the world you least want to see. That means you need my help.'

'I don't need your help.'

'You are confused, aren't you? You do. Right now, you think you just want some advice, from the one person in the world you're willing to accept has intelligence as great as your own, but soon you'll start to see how much you need me, if you want to win.'

'Win what? The war is over, Lash.'

'Of course it isn't. There are far too many loose ends. I see it all. I can see the war continuing.' Lash swallowed and stared at the ceiling with a look of desperation, as if hoping the dirty light bulb might provide answers. She spoke faster, more desperately, 'It goes on everywhere, a thousand ways, a thousand possibilities, always the variables - I never forget to factor in defensive terrain you know - and I can't remember it all, and I forget the patterns, and I have to start again, and why can't it just happen?' It was at this point that Sonja called for the doctor. 'Why can't it just happen so I can see how it starts, not everything, just the start, then I can work on it, and I can have the answer Sonja,' she stared pleadingly into Sonja's eyes as the needle entered her neck. 'I can have the answer…'

* * *

Lash had seen Flak tied to a table, whimpering, not bothering to struggle against the restraints, just whispering her name as the knife cut his flesh. She had grown up with knives. With knives, you knew where you were. 

Flak was wrong. A long assessment, and a brief glance over reports from the second war revealed that. Hawke had often said it, albeit more eloquently - more for the sake of quietly asserting his own mental superiority than sparing Flak's feelings - and Lash had been happy to translate. There was something wrong with Flak. He had been broken. But there was potential. Lash could see that from the Orange Star casualty records. The Bolt Guard had seen it too. Bits of him were good. Some bits were bad. Lash liked it when things could be simplified to that level. So she cut away the bad bits, discarded them somewhere - she couldn't remember where - and used the good bits. They were rearranged, sealed in a metal shell, safe and well protected, and Flak worked again. And to celebrate the change, she renamed him Jugger.

She didn't particularly mind that she had seen Flak as a tattered pile of blood and lacerated flesh. Sami had been disgusted when Lash had told her, which had somewhat confused Lash; Flak had been, at the point described, a somewhat messy collection of organs, slices of brain matter, and lots of blood, and that was what he had been, and nothing else, and so how else was Lash supposed to describe him?

She doesn't see Flak anymore. He was no longer worth consideration. But she does see Hawke, sometimes, even though they keep telling her that he's dead.

* * *

Sonja came back the next day, as Lash had expected. This time, Sonja entered at once, sat down, breathed deeply and began. 'Lash, are you aware that all combat operations have ceased?' 

'They haven't. Everybody's just waiting. Waiting for orders. Waiting to move. One day you'll need me to help them move.'

'Why do you think they're waiting?'

'Because it's not done yet. There are still colours in the world. There are boundaries. Until there's just the one, the game will never be over.'

'This isn't a game,' Sonja snapped sharply, and immediately regretted betraying her annoyance; she suspected Lash was deliberately antagonising her.

'Yes it is,' corrected Lash, scrunching up her nose, as if rebuking Sonja for saying something ridiculous, 'Of course it's a game. It's all a game. There are pieces and moves and winners and losers'

'People die!'

'I never said it was a nice game. The stakes are generally very high. Now-' she said, raising her eyebrows and interrupting as Sonja took a breath to deliver what Lash guessed would be several counter-arguments, 'while we could spend many happy hours engaged in one-upmanship and pedantry, shall we get to the point? You want to take me back home with you, but first you want to speak to me. That suggests you want to find something out. Might I recommend you just ask.'

'That- That doesn't make sense,' snapped Sonja with a hint of irritation.

'No, it makes absolute perfect sense, and that's why you're here; to offer Orange Star the answer to their prayers; to remove me - the one CO they can't do anything about, as I am too young to qualify for capital punishment - and so Yellow Comet have offered to remove me,' Lash again raised her eyes to the ceiling, and began rambling through her train of thought as it occurred to her, 'what have you told them, to give me better psychiatry care? Doesn't matter, Orange Star will be thrilled to get rid of me, but you see everything, you see the moves, and you want me there, by your side, helping make sure that when it matters, I'm helping Yellow Comet, because you see it all, but not as clearly, and you need my help.'

Lash gave Sonja a brief moment to reply, but Sonja was white with shock, so Lash continued, 'Or is it worse? Tell me, what weapons do you need me to repair for you? What do you know about Jugger? Maybe little old Hawke who you can't wake up? Just my brain, is it, scooped out, in a suit, Jugger's body perhaps, two minds, one body, or something safer, kill me, convenient crash, or war crimes?'

Lash always had a good ability to spot the critical moment in situations. Somehow, she guessed, or determined, that something very important was being decided, and that feeling was enough to drag her mind back through all the trails it had fled down. She decided to be completely open with Sonja.

'Just for once, don't hide, don't play defensively, don't wait to counter, don't play the short game. You know, for somebody so brilliant, you can be bloody stupid. Kill them all. Start now. You are the only one who could do it. Other than me, of course.' Lash earnestly and unashamedly begged, her eyes more watery than Sonja had ever seen before. 'Together, it wouldn't even be that difficult.'

'You can see that? You can see the world belonging to…?' Sonja replied with wide eyes.

Lash looked down, lowered her voice, 'Every time I close my eyes. Every time I sleep. I see it all. The noise, and the smell. I can help you. I can rebuild it all; the cannons, the lasers, the factories, even the crystals if you want. We can win the long game together.'

Sonja left without saying a word.

* * *

Lash knows that the game's just been paused. Nobody's playing right now. But it's still there. The pieces are beginning to rattle. She hears the sounds at night; mud kicked up, tread cutting through the swell, the engines' roar in deserted city streets. She misses the game. She shone at the game. 

She sees the moves that have to be made early on. She sees pawns moving a step forwards, and wonders whether anybody realises they can't ever step back again. Sometimes when she's feeling kind, she tells Sami all about the things that are coming, but Sami doesn't visit for a few days after that happens. She sees Hawke because she knows he's still alive somewhere. She hears the noise because it's coming. She sees the future, but nobody else wants to hear about it. One day they will, when they need her again.

The whole war plays out in her head, branching off with variables, possibilities, a thousand wars, a thousand people slaughtered a thousand times. Sami with a bullet through the neck. She sees that one a lot. Sami doesn't like to hear about it though. Lash finds this odd; she always feels the better response would be to leave Lash's medication dose as it is, and invest in a better neck guard.

* * *

Sonja walked the empty corridors to the higher levels. 

'And?' Sami asked, an empty glass in her hand.

'Yellow Comet will be dropping its objection,' replied Sonja levelly, just before she left Orange Star territory without speaking to anybody else. Only when she was over international waters and - pilot aside - miles from another soul did she allow herself to cry.

* * *

Sometimes, just sometimes, when Lash can't see through the walls, and can't see herself outside with Nell and Sami and Jess, and the picture she drew is just a picture, she catches why they don't like the future. Denial. Denial that the game has to restart. They'll see one day though. They'll see that Lash was just thinking a few moves ahead. 

Sensations in her limbs suggest that the drugs are wearing off. She can feel that she's in a new chair. A less nice chair. She killed thousands. She guesses a chair that isn't that comfortable is getting off fairly easily. She's also aware that Hawke is standing next to her, even though they all insist that he's dead.

'They're killing me, aren't they?'

'I imagine so, yes,' Hawke replies without a hint of emotion, his hands firmly in his pockets.

'Death doesn't seem to have slowed you down much,' she comments with a raised eyebrow, pretending to consider Hawke with serious appraisal.

'Special circumstances,' Hawke replies dryly, coldly standing perfectly straight.

'Very silly of them to kill me,' she airily considers.

'You can see where they're coming from. I just think all of them are terrified of you falling into somebody else's hands.'

'But Sonja knows… she knows that I'm still lucid enough to understand the forbidden weapons. Because I told her so.'

'I too suspect her motives are more self interested than others. And her understanding of the forbidden technology is more advanced than she'll admit,' Hawke's voice mutters from somewhere, though she can't see him anymore.

'Clever girl,' Lash mutters with a giggle that becomes a cough, 'Even cleverer than I thought.' Lash could see it all in her mind; Sonja's reconnaissance jeeps tearing across the desert within hours of the black crystals being destroyed, gathering up the fragments, hiding them away, experimenting away from prying eyes. She probably had working prototypes already. And Lash loved her for it.

The darkness takes on a yellow hue. Yellow stretching on, forever and ever, far below her. She hears the tanks and planes and ships. All yellow. And she lets herself fall into it.


End file.
